The present matter relates in general to mobile electronic devices and more particularly to a system and method for creating, managing and deploying notification profiles for notifying a user of the occurrence of a device event such as the receipt of voice or data communication or the occurrence of appointment and task reminders, browser content etc.
Mobile electronic devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), cell phones, pagers, organizers and wireless mobile computing devices, generally provide some form of notification to the user when a device event occurs. The occurrence of a device event such as the receipt of a new voice or data communication, a calendar appointment reminder or an alarm is notified to the user in one or more sensory ways. These notifications typically take the form of an audible signal, a vibration, or a visual signal.
The notification can be intrusive in certain places, such as movie theatres and meeting rooms. In recognition of this problem, most modern devices are configured with profiles to control the behaviour of the device in different situations.
For example some cellular telephones have a group of profiles that allow the user to personalize the phones tone settings for different events and environments. The profiles generally allow the user to select one or more tone settings, for example, general (default), silent, meeting or outdoor. Depending on the environment, the user will scroll down a list of profiles and select the one they want to activate
Some telephones include profiles that allow the user to customize the ring tones of certain types of incoming calls; such as calls with: caller identification (ID); no caller identification; or roaming.
As may be seen, current profile mechanisms allow a user to select unique notifications for device events generated by applications such as alarms, calendars, tasks or incoming voice or data communications etc. However device events may have different attributes or characteristics (such as the sender's identity in a received email) for which the user of the device desires a unique notification. Accordingly there is a need for a system and method for providing unique notifications based on attributes or characteristics of device events.